Book Notes: The World Without You,’ by Joshua Henkin

Tuesday

Jun 19, 2012 at 12:01 AMJun 19, 2012 at 7:14 PM

“The World Without You” by Joshua Henkin, author of the acclaimed book “Matrimony” and “Swimming Across the Hudson,” is big family drama writ lite. A large, handsome, well-to-do, intelligent Jewish family from New York City with a country house in Lenox, Mass., in the heart of the Berkshires, cannot hold it together after Leo, one of the gifted siblings, is captured and killed in Iraq while reporting on the war. The year between his death and the unveiling and memorial service in Lenox has tested the family’s bonds.

Rae Padilla Francoeur

"The World Without You," by Joshua Henkin. Pantheon, New York, June 2012. 336 pages. $25.95

“The World Without You” by Joshua Henkin, author of the acclaimed book “Matrimony” and “Swimming Across the Hudson,” is big family drama writ lite. A large, handsome, well-to-do, intelligent Jewish family from New York City with a country house in Lenox, Mass., in the heart of the Berkshires, cannot hold it together after Leo, one of the gifted siblings, is captured and killed in Iraq while reporting on the war. The year between his death and the unveiling and memorial service in Lenox has tested the family’s bonds.

The Frankel family is comparatively well adjusted. It has received most of the blessings life is capable of bestowing including professional accomplishments, tons of money, movie-star looks, athleticism, health and a curiosity that keeps the clan moving forward. The fly in the ointment is, perhaps, Noelle, the prettiest of the three daughters and, at present, the most contrary. She’s blatantly and unabashedly promiscuous until she converts to Orthodox Judaism and settles in Jerusalem. There she marries an unbearable boor who has taken the name Amram. The family does not seem particularly alarmed by the dangers of Noelle’s sexual exploits nor do they blink at her boor’s loutish antics. Sadly he is not written as comic relief but appears as an incessant irritant no one bothers to swat away.

Leo is dead when we meet his parents Marilyn and David in Lenox. David is practically mute from grief and rudely withdrawn from his wife. He barely acknowledges Marilyn, who spends her rage practicing her tennis serve while David takes up running. Their good fortune extends to their fitness, as they are both 70.

Marilyn and David are awaiting the imminent arrival of the clan at the start of the book, which includes grandchildren and spouses and Leo’s widow. Leo was killed on the Fourth of July so his memorial service, likely to be attended by press and much of the Lenox community, is set for that day as well. The story takes place in the few days leading up to the memorial service, with flashbacks.

Marilyn has decided to leave David and she plans to make this announcement at the family’s first dinner gathering since Leo died. Lily, the daughter who lives in D.C. with her significant other, a restaurateur who’s trying to start up a new restaurant, is the most compassionate of the lot. Most everyone is too personally stunned and personally hurt by the news of the breakup to concern themselves with their parents’ sadness. Lily eventually takes her father aside and asks him how he’s doing.

Daughter Clarissa and her brilliant husband Nathaniel are trying to conceive. They have very unpleasant sex that inconveniences everyone. The widow, Thisbe, arrives with her and Leo’s young boy Calder. Thisbe intends to announce that she has begun a serious relationship with a fellow graduate student at Berkeley, but she’s finding it hard to do so given the problems erupting around the dinner table.

Amram, the jealous, incompetent and spiteful boor, storms out of the house and does not return for the memorial service. He does not answer his cell phone and, naturally, his children and the rest of his family worry. The memorial service begins late in the hopes that he will show up at the last minute.

For the most part, these problems of a gifted upper-middle-class family are not our problems. When Thisbe’s husband is assassinated in Iraq, the Frankel family matriarch immediately writes her a $200,000 check. There’s more where that came from. And though she doesn’t touch it, it’s certainly not going to remain untouched if eviction or hunger pangs complicate her life.

The only recognizable grief is expressed by the parents. A miserable few days with their selfish family seems to cure them of that, however.

Rae Padilla Francoeur’s memoir, “Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Love Affair,” is available online or in bookstores. Write her at rae.francoeur@verizon.net. Or read her blog at http://www.freefallrae.blogspot.com/ or follow her @RaeAF.

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